


Turnabout

by Doranwen



Category: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Genre: Gen, Identity Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doranwen/pseuds/Doranwen
Summary: Lois examines the evidence that her partner may not be who he says he is.





	Turnabout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whilst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilst/gifts).



> Set just after the end of Witness.

Lois finished unlocking her door and stepped inside, flicking on the lights. She turned back to face the doorway. "Thanks for walking me home, Clark," she said with a little smile.

"My pleasure. Good night, Lois," Clark said, beginning to walk away.

Clark was proof that chivalry hadn't vanished entirely, Lois thought as she re-did all of her locks. They just didn't make men like him these days. Most men would've expected to come inside after walking a woman home, but Clark… Lois shook her head. Even if Clark **had** come inside, he wouldn't have expected anything from her.

He had really saved her life, too. From the skateboarder, and Finn when he was trying to choke her in her apartment. Her forehead suddenly wrinkled as it struck her: just how **had** Clark known to come in then?

He couldn't have been hanging around in the hallway outside her apartment. If he'd seen Mr. Tracewski leave, he had to be outside. Had he seen the fake Mr. Tracewski come in? Somehow she suspected Sebastian Finn wouldn't have entered with Mr. Tracewski's face on. It would have been too easy for someone to see, someone observant like Clark, who had apparently been sitting outside her building all night long. No, Finn would have come in as someone else, found somewhere to put on his mask and makeup, and then approached her door. Which still didn't explain Clark rescuing her in the nick of time. The only way he could've known that Finn was attacking her was to have superhearing like Superman.

Lois froze. It couldn't be—could it? She had seen them both together, she was sure. At an accident scene, or a news conference where Superman was awarded… yet now that she thought about it, Clark always had to leave briefly, and for the oddest of reasons too. Urgent bathroom trip, returning a video to the video rental place, a shipment from the Cheese of the Month club (was that even a thing?)—Clark had a million excuses for taking off. And Superman was always seen or heard soon after.

Yet if that were true, it would mean that **Superman** had sent her all over the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility in pursuit of a Godzilla doll with an S on its chest. And it would mean that he had stood next to her every day, lying about who he was. Superman wouldn't do that, would he?

There was only one way to approach this. She grabbed a notepad and pen, and settled down at the table. At the top she wrote Is and Is Not in two columns. Under the Is column she wrote:

1\. heard Finn choking me  
2\. never both in the same place at the same time

Under the Is Not column she wrote:

1\. Superman wouldn't lie

She tapped the end of the pencil against her cheek thoughtfully. Superman and Clark had different personalities. Superman was heroic (he was even more handsome), and well, Clark was not. Even if he did save her life. She wrote that down under Is Not. And Clark wore glasses; Superman had perfect eyesight. The word "glasses" went under Is Not. Though… he was always tipping them down his nose for some reason. To see better without them in the way? She wrote "Clark's glasses block Super vision?" under Is.

She started suddenly, remembering. Clark had gotten a paper cut when they were in Smallville. Superman wasn't vulnerable to paper cuts. So that went under Is Not. She wrote it down. Except… there was all that business about kryptonite. She had thought it was a mythical rock, but—what if it were real? What if it had the potential to harm Superman, to make him physically vulnerable? And he said he hadn't had a paper cut before; what adult never had a paper cut? Reluctantly she had to admit that it **was** possible, and wrote "vulnerable from kryptonite - paper cut?" under Is.

And then there was the heat wave. Clark was leaving Metropolis at the same time Superman was. He had said he found the city's treatment of Superman too discouraging, but what if he were leaving because he had to? She added "both left at same time during heat wave" to the Is column.

Lois thought some more. Nightfall had happened only a little while ago. Clark had lost his memory somehow, and Superman couldn't be found during the same time, even though they had evidence he had made it back to earth. What if Clark's amnesia were caused by ramming into an asteroid at full speed? How even that could affect Superman, she wasn't sure, but if the asteroid came from outer space, who knew what it was made of? Maybe there were other rocks besides kryptonite that could affect Superman. So "amnesia from Nightfall" went under Is.

Lois set the pen down and looked at her list. Nearly all of the few things she could put under Is Not were events that had reasonable explanations if they were the same person. The one exception was that Superman didn't lie, but part of her was starting to wonder about that too. The evidence to the contrary was beginning to be overwhelming—and Lois was beginning to fume.

That fink! she thought. The things she had said to Superman, not knowing he was Clark. The ways Clark tried to stand up for Superman… How many times he probably had laughed at her behind her back! Poor Lois, fooled by a pair of glasses, a change in hairstyle, and a different outfit.

Her anger dissipated some as she remembered the way Clark had treated her as they walked home. He always cared about her ultimate well-being, even if he occasionally made some major mistakes in dealing with her. (And she had always made sure he knew when he'd crossed those lines!) He respected her opinions and challenged her. He couldn't truly be laughing at her, then. He had **tried** to hide who he was from her. And if she had to think about it, she knew exactly why.

Clark had never hidden his opinion that Superman should be allowed privacy, a life of his own. If she had found out that Clark and Superman were the same person, before she had gotten to know either one, she probably would've printed it on the front page of the Daily Planet and won a Kerth award for it. He would have had press camped out on his doorstep and stalking him everywhere. And his parents! His parents weren't superhuman. All any criminal would have to do would be to kidnap one or both of them and Clark would do anything to save them. No, she couldn't blame him for hiding it from her. What had she ever done to earn that kind of trust?

Lois pressed her lips together thoughtfully. Maybe she hadn't earned it so far, but now that she knew… Surely if he realized she wasn't going to print his secret, he might tell her? They were good friends, after all. A small corner of her mind whispered that perhaps that wasn't as true as she wanted it to be. But it could be; this was something she could change. Besides, he **really** needed some help with his excuses, or Perry would figure it out eventually.

She tore off the top page of the notepad, then the next two, just in case. If she were right, this was not something she could leave lying around. She began to tear the papers into tiny shreds. A minute later, the handful of pieces were floating in the toilet, swirling down as she flushed.

This would definitely make life interesting, she thought as she began to get ready for bed. She wondered how long it would take for Clark to figure out **her** secret this time?


End file.
